PATRIOT FILE PHOTO

THE COMMUNITY SPOKE, AND LISTENED – In September 2001 in Mother’s Park, Steve Luciani reads the names of Massachusetts men and women who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Steve Luciani recalls Mother’s Park vigil after 9/11

Lots of people wondered what to do after terrorists attacked our country on Sept. 11, 2001. Steve Luciani of Centerville actually did something: he organized a march and a candlelight vigil in Mother’s Park on the 20th of that shocking month.

As his little granddaughter, a newly-minted first grader, skipped around Luciani’s Coachlight Carpets store on Route 28 this week, he recalled how the vigil – estimated at the time by the Patriot’s John Watters to be attended by 1,000 people – came to happen.

First, Luciani heard Brian Baker, then also of Centerville, say he wished the village would have some kind of commemoration for the people who died in the terror, especially those with ties to Cape Cod. Then, he read an essay from the Miami Herald about calamity. The piece said, he recalled, that adversity can either split people apart or bring them together.

Luciani heard, from the local resident’s wish and the Florida newspaper’s commentary, a call to organize a gathering, based in Centerville, that would, he said, “give people encouragement to go on, and show that they weren’t alone.”

His next step was to go on the radio to invite people to gather outside his store on Route 28 near the Old Stage Road lights for a walk to Mother’s Park. “Patriotism, peace, and remembrance” was to be the theme, he said.

In sorrow, Luciani observed, “everyone has to grieve in their own way. And I wanted to help people grieve. Life is so short and so precious.

“I’m not a politician. I just wanted to give back,” he said, referring to the support he felt from residents of the village when his son suffered a head injury.

Support for the vigil came in many ways, said Luciani, who built a stand and set up a public address system in the park to ready it for the vigil. News of the event began to spread by word of mouth. Barnstable police showed up to escort the marchers. Rev. Jim Scovil, who lives in the village, offered a prayer after the park filled with people. Luciani read the names of Cape Codders who died in the attacks, and after each name a firefighter rang a bell. A talented young singer offered a patriotic song. Luciani identified her as Siobhan Magnus.

The tragedies and delights of life are, for Luciani, brought together in a unique object that was made for him by Larry Sinclair, formerly a mail carrier from the Centerville Post Office. Luciani loves, literally, to play Santa Claus. “I have a whole Santa room in my house,” he said of the Kris Kringle items that people have given him over his 30 years in the role.

Sinclair’s gift keeps September 2001 close at hand. It’s a hand-carved walking stick decorated with Santa faces, crosses, hearts, three free-moving “snowballs,” colored red. white, and blue caged in the heart of the stick – and, right up top, the date, 9/11.

“When I’m dressed up as Santa and little kids are afraid to come near me,” Luciani explained, “I let them look at the stick and try to feel if the snowballs are cold.” On the wall beside his desk are hundreds of family photos, some of them featuring him in his Saint Nick garb, which lends a “Christmas every day” atmosphere to the store.

Coachlight Carpets is well known in town for its tableaus at the corner by the cemetery across from the store. Recent offerings have included a smiley face of flowers; a recreation of the Iwo Jima flag-raising photograph; and, currently, a plug for the “next chapter” of the Centerville library.

The business also sponsors the plantings on traffic island at the Old Stage Road/Route 28 lights – as well as the little signs with corny jokes like, “If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him that he has the right to remain silent?”

Luciani’s store, besides the obvious carpet and flooring displays, also features a play area for customers’ little children, and a bin for the non-perishables he collects for food pantries. As a reporter’s interview came to an end, he and his 6-year-old granddaughter began to play with a carousel of samples. She not only wouldn’t remember 9/11 – she wasn’t even born then. And in their play, life went on.

“I didn’t go to college,” Luciani said as he looked around at his family members and his business, “but I do go on gut instinct.”